Catheters are increasingly being used to perform various functions in diagnosis and treatment of patients. Often, the catheter is inserted into a patient's body via the patient's vascular system and is steered to the desired position.
It will be appreciated that the steering of the catheter involves careful manipulation in order not to damage the vascular system. As a consequence of this, a steering mechanism incorporated in the catheter generally provides for reasonably large radii of curvature.
Also, in the positioning of devices, both for sensing signals and for heat treatment, the shape of the device when deflected sometimes makes accessing a particular part of the body difficult, for example, a catheter to be placed in the coronary sinus of the heart.
In addition, a site to be treated using the catheter more often than not has surface irregularities that must be overcome in order to obtain, for example, suitable electrode-tissue contact.